Taliban’s existential threat to Afghanistan wanes, but next president faces big problems

BY KEVIN SIEFF

As Afghans wait for the results from this weekend’s presidential election, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Taliban — which failed to undermine the vote — no longer represents an existential threat to the country’s government.

But that is of little solace to the millions of Afghans who may face a graver enemy in the government itself — a bundle of inept and corruption-plagued institutions whose actions could threaten the gains of the past decade.

About 7 million voters turned out Saturday, a showing some Afghans read as a repudiation of the Taliban and others saw as a sign of the electorate’s desperation to reform a host of public institutions.

The next president, who will be either former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah or former finance minister Ashraf Ghani, will inherit those institutions. On Sunday, both campaigns frantically tried to assess the election outcome, reporting dozens of cases of voting fraud to the country’s election commission. The official results won’t be released until early July.

Neither candidate campaigned primarily on his ability to suppress the insurgency. Both found that the electorate had more pressing worries.

“I’m not concerned about the insurgency. The security forces are capable of dealing with it,” said Yama Torabi, head of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, an Afghan watchdog organization. “But I am concerned about corruption and its impact on the economy.”

Much of the international community still sees Afghanistan through the lens of the ongoing counterterrorism mission, targeting Taliban insurgents who move freely in parts of eastern and southern Afghanistan. The threat from the Taliban is hardly over; hundreds of Afghans continue to be killed each month.

Many considered the elections to be a litmus test of the Taliban’s relevance. If its fighters had succeeded in their plan to disrupt the Afghan electoral process, it would have said something about the insurgents’ clout — if not their capacity to conduct attacks, then their ability to instill fear.

Saturday’s vote was marred by hundreds of small-scale Taliban attacks, and more than 40 people were killed. But it would have taken much more than that to derail the elections. And, thanks to the growing strength of the Afghan security forces, the Taliban does not appear to have the capability to retake major urban centers.

The other threats to Afghanistan — the fragility of its economy and institutions — stand a better chance at destabilizing the country and throwing the U.S. investment here into a tailspin.

For example, it appears increasingly likely that the government will be financially blacklisted by next week for failing to pass an anti-money laundering law, a designation that would hinder Afghanistan’s ability to do business with much of the world.

The Financial Action Task Force, an international regulatory body, had pledged to blacklist Afghanistan if it hadn’t made progress on a list of IMF requirements issued in 2001 to minimize the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing. Afghanistan’s central bank crafted the legislation this year, but it was watered down and then got caught up in political gridlock.

“This law should have been approved and implemented 10 years ago, but Afghan officials were busy laundering money,” said Abbas Ibrahimzada, a parliamentarian from central Balkh province.